2006-01-01 04:00:00 PDT United Nations -- Officials of the United Nations have decided they must act within weeks to produce an alternative to the widely discredited Human Rights Commission to maintain hope of redeeming the world body's credibility in 2006.

The commission, based in Geneva, has been a persistent embarrassment to the United Nations because participation has been open to countries such as Cuba, Sudan and Zimbabwe, current members that are themselves accused of rights abuses. Libya held the chairmanship in 2003.

"The reason highly abusive governments flock to the commission is to prevent condemnation of themselves and their kind, and most of the time they succeed," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, a nongovernmental organization that keeps tabs on rights violations worldwide. "If you're a thug, you want to be on the committee that tries to condemn thugs."

Mark Malloch Brown, chief of staff to Secretary-General Kofi Annan, noted that with two other crucial steps toward reform in place -- a new Peacebuilding Commission to help countries emerging from war, and a biennial budget under an arrangement laying the groundwork for major management change by June -- the rights commission had taken center stage.

"For the great global public, the performance or nonperformance of the Human Rights Commission has become the litmus test of U.N. renewal," he said. "We can't overestimate getting a clear win on this in January."

Annan begins his last year in office with a mandate to bring fundamental and lasting change to the beleaguered institution, which has struggled through a period of scandal and mismanagement. Negotiators have been struggling for months over the terms of a new Human Rights Council that Annan proposed last spring to replace the commission.

A hoped-for agreement in December did not materialize, and negotiators resume talks on Jan. 11. They must settle on a resolution for the new council soon after if it is to be in place by March, when the commission reconvenes.

"The commission should hold that meeting with the understanding that it is going to be its last meeting," said Ricardo Arias, the ambassador of Panama, who is one of the leaders of the group drawing up the new Human Rights Council.

The current commission has 53 members serving staggered three-year terms and elected from slates put forward by regional groups. It meets each year in Geneva for six weeks.

The proposed council replacing the commission would exist year-round in order to be free to act when rights violations are discovered, conduct periodic reviews of every country's human rights performance and meet more frequently throughout the year.

The proposal envisions votes on each individual candidate for membership rather than on regional slates. As with most of the changes being proposed at the United Nations, the rights council has drawn suspicion from the poorer and less developed nations of the 191-member General Assembly. They say they fear the new council may be yet another way for wealthier and more powerful nations to intrude in their affairs.

Peggy Hicks, the global advocacy director of Human Rights Watch, said that having rights abusers on the panel had a broadly debilitating effect on its work. "In the case of Sudan, the Sudanese government's presence on the commission meant that African states and others watered down language that human rights groups around the world thought appropriate to address crimes against humanity," she said.

"In general," Hicks said, "what the presence of abusive countries on the commission means is that much of its energy is taken up with the blocking actions and delaying tactics that end up weakening action on human rights abuses worldwide. Yes, they delay action on their own internal situations, but they have a vested interest in seeing that the overall ability is as weak as possible."

Kristen Silverberg, assistant secretary of state for international organizations, said the U.S. priorities were "to improve the membership so that countries like Zimbabwe and Sudan were not eligible" and "to make sure the council can act."